Monday, September 15, 2014

One of at least 18 Odyssey mosaics reported stolen from northeastern Syria in early 2013. This is a detail of Odysseus tied to his mast, resisting the sirens. Despite reports, conflicting information originally places this mosaic in Tunisia, not Syria. Image Source: Past Horizons.

Since 2011, reports have circulated that Syria's classical heritage is being ruined or plundered by the conflict in that country. When war began, there were some 78 formal archaeological digs in the country. Then the conflict between the population and the government, followed by the Islamic State, led to an obliteration of Syria's precious past. Islamic State militants, like the Taliban, abhor graven images, although they are still willing to sell the stolen artifacts which they don't destroy. They are not alone on that black market.

On 2 September 2014, the New York Timesreported that the Islamic State has set up a nasty sideline selling Syrian archaeological artifacts:

We have recently returned from southern Turkey, where we were training
Syrian activists and museum staff preservationists to document and
protect their country’s cultural heritage. That heritage includes
remains from the ancient Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Hellenistic, Roman,
Byzantine and Islamic periods, along with some of the earliest examples
of writing and some of the best examples of Hellenistic, Roman and
Christian mosaics.

In extensive conversations with those working and living in areas
currently under ISIS control, we learned that ISIS is indeed involved in
the illicit antiquities trade, but in a way that is more complex and
insidious than we expected. ...

ISIS permits local inhabitants to dig at these sites in exchange for a percentage of the monetary value of any finds.

The group’s rationale for this levy is the Islamic khums tax, according to
which Muslims are required to pay the state treasury a percentage of the
value of any goods or treasure recovered from the ground. ISIS claims
to be the legitimate recipient of such proceeds.

The amount levied for the khums varies by region and the type of object
recovered. In ISIS-controlled areas at the periphery of Aleppo Province
in Syria, the khums is 20 percent. In the Raqqa region, the levy can
reach up to 50 percent or even higher if the finds are from the Islamic
period (beginning in the early-to-mid-seventh century) or made of
precious metals like gold.

The
scale of looting varies considerably under this system, and much is
left to the discretion of local ISIS leaders. For a few areas, such as
the ancient sites along the Euphrates River, ISIS leaders have
encouraged digging by semiprofessional field crews. These teams are
often from Iraq and are applying and profiting from their experience
looting ancient sites there. They operate with a “license” from ISIS,
and an ISIS representative is assigned to oversee their work to ensure
the proper use of heavy machinery and to verify accurate payment of the
khums.

In addition to the looting, ISIS seems to be encouraging the clandestine
export of archaeological finds, which is primarily centered on the
border crossing from Syria into Turkey near Tel Abyad, an ISIS
stronghold. There is reason to suspect that ISIS has approved and
encourages the transborder antiquities trade.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Tomorrow, the European Space Agency is planning to announce how and where its spacecraft, Rosetta, will land on the comet 67P/C-G. This Jupiter class comet, discovered in 1969 by Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko, is a 10-billion-tonne mass of ice and dust, which is currently about 400 million km from earth. Here are some photos of Rosetta has already taken of the comet's surface.